


The Morning After The Night Before

by blamefincham



Category: Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Brotp, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blamefincham/pseuds/blamefincham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>@mattfincham:</b> Oof. Don't know how we got through that show today. It didn't start well when I had to clothe & water @grimmers and @fionaradio</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning After The Night Before

**Author's Note:**

> Anything I try to write about the team that's not AU just turns itself into genfic, sigh. Well, perhaps that's for the best, at least where Matt Fincham's nerves are concerned.
> 
> As per, I am not these people, I don't own them, no libel is intended by what's written here, and I have no way of knowing if this is what happened this morning or not (but it totally is).
> 
> Unbetaed fic originally written on tumblr. All mistakes are my own.

The very moment that it was decided that the Breakfast Show would be going to Radio 1's Ibiza weekend, Matt developed a stress ulcer.

Well. That was probably a slight exaggeration. He was hit with quite a lot of stress at once, but even so those things take time; it would probably be more accurate to say that Matt started to develop one in that moment, and that moment was quite a long time ago. 

It was just--well, Radio 1's Ibiza weekend was legendary, but for all the wrong reasons. Zoe Ball had thrown up two minutes before going on air to do her breakfast show and then gone and gotten off with Fatboy Slim of all people. Sara Cox had wondered on air if the Queen Mum smelt of wee, and Annie Nightengale had had to be forcibly removed from the decks of a nightclub, and this was to say nothing of Lisa l'Anson. Matt loved Nick as a person, sure, but he also knew him, and just imagining what sort of career-ruining scandals Nick could whip up in a place like Ibiza was enough to give him a headache to go with his stress ulcer.

And now it was evident that at least some of his worrying had been warranted. When Matt checked his phone and saw that the time had reached single digits, he could already start to feel sympathy exhaustion for his future self. "C'mon, time to go," he shouted in Nick's ear. He was right next to him, but the music was so loud he could feel it in his bones--which normally he loved, but Matt had to be a sensible adult if no one else was going to be. 

Predictably, Nick turned around from where he'd been waving one of his crutches in the air with a comically large frown. "No way, Finchy! Calvin Harris hasn't even got started yet!" Matt would never, ever admit it, but he had felt the slightest bit relieved when he found out that Nick had injured his foot; at least this way whatever raving he got up to would be slightly tempered by his temporary handicap.

The emphasis was on the slightly, apparently. Matt turned to Fiona, hoping for some help, but she saw where this was going and shook her head at once. "We're in bloody Ibiza, live a little!" she shouted, then reached for another shot. Matt snatched it away, as he had the last four. He knew she'd just get a new one as soon as his back was turned, but he also knew that Fiona would pull it together in the morning with less complaining than Nick, and also that if worse came to worst, she didn't really have to talk that much. Nick, on the other hand...

"C'mon, Matt, we're raving for the country," Nick argued, tossing an arm around Matt's waist to try and pull him back into dancing. Matt considered it, for a long moment, but then shook his head and disentangled himself from Nick's grasp. "I'm going back to the hotel so that the country has a radio show to listen to in the morning," he said firmly. 

He ignored Nick's tragic face (Fiona, for her part, didn't seem particularly bothered; she didn't even turn around to wave him goodbye) and set down some money for his share of their drinks. "Call or text me when you get in. Please. I won't sleep well until I know you've not done a Lisa l'Anson," said Matt by way of goodbye. Nick sighed, extremely dramatically, and waved him away.

\--

True to his word, Matt couldn't sleep well at all. He tossed and turned for what felt like several days' worth of hours, refusing to look at the clock because he knew it would make it that much harder to fall asleep. He must have finally fallen into a light doze at some point, though, because he was jolted awake by his alarm at 5:30.

Instantly, Matt felt a hot, sick sense of dread in his stomach. To be sure, he checked the incoming calls and texts on his phone, but he'd had none since the previous morning, which meant that Nick and Fiona had got themselves back without waking him...or they hadn't, and he'd now have to use the two hours before the show to go and find them, or else face the ruin all of their careers.

He forced himself to calm down, at least a little. There was no sense in spinning out doomsday scenarios, not before he'd so much as checked their hotel rooms. Maybe they'd made it back after all, and he wouldn't have to move home to Suffolk and teach piano lessons out of his parents' lounge for a living. 

Matt forced himself out of bed, tugged on some clothes--whatever was at the top of his suitcase would be fine, no one would be expecting him to look great today--and forwent a shave in favour of checking Fiona's room first. It was completely deserted and judging by the four outfits laid out on the bed, it was unlikely that she'd been back since the previous night. He started to worry again. If Matt had been betting on likely scenarios, he would've chosen that Fiona had made it back and Nick was passed out on a beach somewhere, not the other way around. He turned to leave, but then hesitated for a second. If they were, in fact, missing, time was going to be of the essence, and he hardly thought Fi would want to turn up to work in the glittery silver thing she'd worn out the night before. Matt grabbed a black t-shirt, a pair of jean shorts, and some sandals from the pile on Fiona's bed--he knew she'd be cross with him for going through her underwear so she could just deal with last night's. Hopefully she'd been wearing some.

Steeling himself and half expecting to find either a) an empty room or b) a rave still in progress, Matt opened the door to Nick's room. Passed out on the bed in their underwear were Nick and Fiona both. Nick was drooling on a pillow a bit and Fiona was snoring, but Matt had never been so happy to see two people in his life. He stood in the doorway, grinning like an idiot for several seconds, before shaking himself back into Sensible Producer mode.

Right. He'd come here with a job to do, but now that he wasn't going to have to go running across the island, shouting their names, he wasn't pressed for time. Matt reached into his pocket for his phone and promptly snapped half a dozen photos of the scene on the bed, in various compromising angles, and sent a copy of all of them to his personal email in case Nick or Fiona got hold of his phone later and tried to delete them. 

Blackmail material sorted, Matt considered a couple of options for waking them up, ranging from pouring water on them to using his phone to make a klaxon. Eventually, he settled for shaking them, starting with Fiona because he knew she would wake up more quickly.

She tried to slap his hand away first, but then he said, "Fi, if you're not conscious in the next thirty seconds I'm posting this photo of you in your knickers to twitter," and her eyes opened at once.

"But you haven't got--oh for fuck's sake," Fiona swore, realising the extent of the compromising position she'd found herself in. Matt looked smug. She sat up, a hand to her forehead. "Finchy, we didn't--" 

Matt cut her off with an eyeroll. "Obviously. But it's nearly six, you should probably go throw up and then get dressed before Nick starts complaining about needing the bathroom to do his hair. Here." He handed over the clothes he'd got for her, as well as a few paracetamol from the bottle in his pocket, and she gave him a grateful half-smile before heading off to do as she'd been told, because Fiona was a lovely person who Matt appreciated immensely.

Nick, on the other hand.

Matt sighed, cracked his knuckles, and bent down to shake Nick, but the minute his hand touched Nick's shoulder, Nick spoke. "No," he said, as firmly as one could when one sounded extremely hungover and still had one's eyes closed.

"No?" Matt replied, slightly amused despite himself. "No," Nick confirmed, then grabbed blindly around on the bed for something. Matt realised Nick was looking for a pillow to cover his face with, and with the combined powers of sobriety and sight, he was quicker. "I'll give you no. Get up, Grimshaw," he said, hitting Nick with the pillow and then snatching it away before Nick could take it.

"Uuuuugh, Finchaaaaam," Nick whined (much more quietly and pathetically than usual, and Matt almost felt sympathetic for a moment before:) "I can't get up. Like, physically, I'm too hungover to move. It's science." Sympathy entirely gone, Matt rolled his eyes. "No, it isn't, it's laziness. I don't care, anyway. You've got a job to do, son." Nick shook his head quickly, then groaned when that apparently made it hurt worse. "I quit. I don't want to work at Radio 1 anymore if it means I have to get up."

Matt rolled his eyes again, eternally thankful that he didn't have to do this every morning. "Nick, for heaven's sake, you're a grown man. Get out of the bed," he said in a tone that suggested he was quite close to snapping. Nick sighed, paused for a moment, then opened his eyes enough to extend a hand in Matt's general direction.

Naively, Matt assumed that this was Nick asking for a hand up, and took it, but surprisingly quickly for someone in such a bad way, Nick pulled him down onto the bed with him. "What the--" Matt exclaimed, but then Nick tossed an arm and a leg over him, nuzzling his face into Matt's neck. "Now you're not up so I don't have to be either," said Nick by way of explanation. "Me likey Finchy, me likey Finchy," he chanted against Matt's skin.

It was entirely possible that Nick was still somewhat drunk, and that this was going to be a lot more difficult than Matt had anticipated.

Matt shoved at Nick's limbs, but he'd chosen to use the injured leg and Matt wasn't cruel enough to kick that, and as for his arms, well--Matt was a pretty small man, and Nick had been working out a lot lately, and anyway he didn't want to be vomited on. "For God's sake, Nick, you realise you're in just your pants?" said Matt, voice rather higher than normal. "Grincham is real," Nick crowed quietly, smacking a kiss on Matt's cheek. Matt groaned.

A shutter noise from somewhere in the vicinity of the bathroom made Matt aware that things had gone from bad to worse. He tipped his head up to see Fiona, head and phone poking out of the bathroom door, giggling. "Now you can't post the picture of me in my knickers. Turnabout is fair play!" she said, almost sing-song in her glee. Matt groaned again, and Nick cuddled in closer to his side.

How has this become his life, honestly.

In the end, Matt frees himself from Nick's slothlike embrace through some sneaky tickling, he gets Nick and Fi both to drink some water and take some paracetamol, nobody vomits, and they all make it to Cafe Mambo by quarter to seven which is really much earlier than Matt had been expecting. Fiona promptly curls up in a corner "for just a few minutes," and Matt sighs and sets about making sure that all the equipment is in order. Nick limps over and stands there for a minute, watching. "Did you wake us up so early because you thought you were going to have to go find us in a ditch somewhere?" he asks. When Matt nods, Nick chuckles and adds, "Would you have actually gone looking or just given us up as a lost cause?" Matt shoots Nick a slightly affronted look over his shoulder. "I'd have gone looking, obviously."

Nick, more amused by this line of conversation than Matt (as ever), continues, "But what if it'd got to, like, 7:20 and you still hadn't found us?" Matt sighs as he unplugs a mic and then plugs it into the correct channel. "I'd have called B-Traits or somebody to come in early and kept looking, probably." Nick knows as well as Matt does that this is not the Auntie Beeb-approved course of action in an emergency of that nature, and in response he hooks his chin over Matt's shoulder and says, "Awww, Fincham, you do like us. What if we were kidnapped, would you pull a Liam Neeson and go gallivanting all over Europe to find us?" 

Deadpan, Matt shoots back, "If you let my presenter and assistant producer go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will..." he pauses, for effect, and Nick waits expectantly. "Send you flowers for taking them off my hands." 

Nick hits him in the shin with his crutch.


End file.
